Small and very interesting fish needs ID

[Luis]

I'm looking for an adition to my reeftank and I found this fish. I've been told it eats any kind of algae, looks like a tiny colored fresh water plecostomus and it spends all the time attached to the glass. It changes colors at it's will! i've been browsing books for ID but I could not find it. Can you help me out? Thanks.

 

[Anonymous]

It's a clingfish. As far as I know they are all predators, not algae grazers. I am not sure of the genus or species.

 

[Luis]

thanks for your reply, what does it prey on?

I have seen him munching on algae, in the picture you can see some marks on its path where it was eating algae (like lip marks behind him) but maybe I'm wrong and it was just eating pods...

 

[Anonymous]

Looks like the little guys I see in the tidepools in Puerto Rico.

 

[Anonymous]

Luis, it was my feeling that it is a clingfish as well.

I just spent a bunch of time flipping through websites, and the only mention of food is that they tend to eat isopods? But it sure does look like he was eating algae doesn't it?

He is a very cute fish, I was going to check some of my books when I get home but I don't recall having any info on them, and I looked at every google image hit for "clingfish" and didn't see anything that was a for sure match.

 

[Anonymous]

Same here. I looked at all the available pictures of clingfish on fishbase.org as well.

 

[Anonymous]

Yah, clings are hard to find much about via the net. We brought some in from Baja that looked fairly similiar and I couldn't get a positive ID anyplace. The pair lasted about 8 months, guess they found something to eat for a spell.

 

[Oceans Ferevh]

Hey, I found some info on your little guy.

It's called a Barred Clingfish or Tomicodon fasciatus

Here's some info on Fishbase

http://filaman.uni-kiel.de/Summary/Spec ... p?id=16661

And original diver pics

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... n%26sa%3DN

Hope this helps

 

[Oceans Ferevh]

hmmm dousn't say much on what it eats though...

Well here's a bit o info on the northern clingfish, maybe it eats things that are similar.


U.S. Range in the Pacific Ocean Alaska to California (Eschmeyer and Herald 1983)
Habitat Intertidal, rocky with algae (kelp) (Eschmeyer and Herald 1983)
Depth range (meters) Down to 7.9 (Eschmeyer and Herald 1983)
Behavior Bottom-dwelling (Burgess et al. 1990)
General Temperature Range (°C) 24 (Burgess et al. 1990)
Average Maximum Overall Length (cm) 16 (Eschmeyer and Herald 1983, Burgess et al. 1990)
Adult Food Preference Invertebrates (Burgess et al. 1990)
Ornamental Market In aquarium guide (Burgess et al. 1990)
Additional Remarks Good community fish (Burgess et al. 1990)


Here's a discusion on wetwebmedia on clingfish:


http://www.wetwebmedia.com/clingfishfaqs.htm

 

[Oceans Ferevh]

It's really cute Shame not much is known about them.

 

[Anonymous]

Good job finding that info!

 

[Mihai]

Excellent find Bethany!
M.

 

[Luis]

Thank you guys for all your help, well I have a bunch of amphipods and copepods in my tank... but once again every time I watch my fish, he's munching the algae in my glass !!! I will keep an eye on him and I will let you know my findings.

Thanks again.

 

[Oceans Ferevh]

Please do. After all, not much is known about this fish, so what you're doing is actually furthuring the knollege base of the community

Isn't reefkeeping fun!